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Comment by dgudkov | Hacker News Reader

The fertility rate in Canada is far below the reproduction level. Any Canadian government has no choice but to double down on immigration. The alternative is financial collapse due to the lack of workforce and diminishing internal consumer demand that would span everything, not just real estate.

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Does this mean that most young Canadians can certainly financially afford to have kids without going into debt, but for some reason (worried about the future? Lazy? Other priorities?) just aren't interested anymore?

So in other words, them not making babies has nothing to do with economics?

That's a good question. I don't think anyone has a good understanding of the causes of low fertility rates in Canada and in other developed countries. I personally think economics certainly play a role here, especially in high COL cities. However, there are undoubtedly other factors that affect fertility (e.g. health issues, family getting out of fashion in general) and it's hard to say if any of the factors defines the trend alone, or it's a combination of them that pushed the fertility rate down.

I wonder if their diet affects this somehow, see for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8990249/ which discusses endocrine disruptors and fertility, among other things.

There is much we don't know about the long-term impact of some of these types of chemicals people ingest nowadays as part of their diet.

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